We test drove the Italian designer’s luxe custom clothing service, which produced a pair of trousers so good they made a grown man giddy.
is on the top floor, around the corner from the restaurant, a semi-private lounge enclosed by racks of samples, not only the designer’s red-carpet-famous formalwear and tailoring but buttery soft moto jackets, denim, knits, even drawstring trousers.
Made-to-measure programs have boomed since the pandemic’s cozifying effect across fashion, with more people wanting more input into the, and willing to pay more for the privilege. But that’s actually a trickier proposition than it sounds. We can romanticize the exacting, myopic, chalk-fingered handiwork of bespoke tailoring, but when it comes to customization, factory-led made-to-measure has the harder job by far. Alteration and manufacturing are natural enemies. The point of automation is to do the same thing again and again as quickly as possible; personalization is doing a unique thing once. So while it’s nice that a handful of your favorite micro-brands are now offering MTM overshirts and bombers, whether they’re any good or not comes down to the factories that produce them. Which means the advantage of made-to-measure from a label that’s been operating at the highest level of Italian luxury going on 50 years should need no mention. Thomas Recchia, head of personalization for Giorgio Armani, tall and dashingly Italian, orders me an espresso and strolls through the options, pulling samples off hangers and shelves, turning jackets inside out, describing the construction, noting which aspects of the designs are fungible and which fixed. Armani’s MTM program, too, is on the move, with a moody black-and-white ad campaign and a swanky Personalization Room in the new Beverly Hills boutique. The leather pieces all look soft enough to sleep in and I spend an unreasonably long time fingering the hem of a midnight blue peak-lapel tuxedo, but I stick to what drew me: basics. Because the appeal of Giorgio Armani has always been the idea that there’s actually no such thing as basic, provided what you make is shockingly luxurious and bombastically expensive, and the best way to test that thesis is with the simplest, most menial, least considered pieces possible. The attire of weekend grilling, or mini-golf: A navy polo and gray slacks.Halfway through one of the fabric books my fingers ferret out a snatch of cloth, downy as a baby’s blanket, and it triggers a soft purring noise that I hope I’m only making in my head. Armani may be best known for his radically relaxed approach to the suit but his early reputation was staked equally on an innovative approach to textiles, which he honed in the ’70s under fellow Milanese master Nino Cerruti. Hisdesigns pioneered the use of lighter materials long considered the purview of women’s clothes, like silk, which was key to that famously exaggerated slouch of a silhouette; ironically, one couldn’t stand up without the other. And very few of the clothes we covet today, from Umit Benan B+ to Gabriela Hearst, could exist without that resounding first step. Out of over 500 fabric choices just for the flat-front SoHo trousers I select one such material, a silk-linen blend in a dark, dusty slate gray. For the long-sleeve polo, a supremely fine-gauge navy merino that spreads across the table like spilled ink. In a private fitting room concealed behind a section of curved wall, director of central alterations Jose Nolasco measures with the speed and sweeping precision of an orchestra conductor, deftly squaring shoulders, raising arms, plucking and pinning and cocking his head. Recchia, Nolasco, and I have a brisk conversation about the various changes—broader shoulders, a higher rise, a left arm ever so slightly longer than the right—and then the design forms are given final notations, handshakes are exchanged, and I go home to start the long wait, the interminable foot-tapping intermission known to anyone who spends too much on well-made clothes, which no amount of money, status, connections, or religion can ultimately hurry along.Chandler Bondurant Nearly eight weeks to the day later the pieces arrive from Italy and I rejoin Jose for a second and final fitting. A week after that I pick up a pair of large dark boxes with embroidered labels reading “Giorgio Armani for JC,” which match the smaller versions inside the clothes. Sitting as it does on the road between ready to wear and fully bespoke, any made-to-measure program includes crowing little doubts about value for money, particularly for trousers that start at $1,000 and knitwear at $1,295. No matter how much the initial flurry of activity feels like bespoke, no matter how expansive the fabric library or involved the design discussions, all the pins and tailor’s tape aside, at some point you bump into that invisible fence of small concessions, look back, and realize how close you still are to off-the-rack. At which point you wonder: How much better than superlative ready to wear can itThe answer is in the construction. This, too, Armani saw coming. The company’s inventive early business model married designer-led but factory-produced ready-to-wear with blinding high-fashion prices and was instantly, smashingly successful. One could argue that Giorgio Armani S.p.A., founded in 1975, is the brand most responsible for today’s high-tech manufacturing wonderland of digitally patterned, air-woven, laser-cut—or, as you might think of it, Made in Italy—luxury goods. Made in Italy has been elevated over the years to a near religious incantation, a hushed paean to swaddling comfort and impeccable craftsmanship, but it started life as a marketing campaign. A bureaucratic one at that, with the Italian government launching an effort in 1980 to promote the country’s luxury goods across the world. But the world in 1980 hardly needed the help when it came to Armani. In just five years the brand had rocketed to one of the top fashion houses on the planet, orbiting the French-speaking clique of Chanel, Christian Dior, and Yves Saint Laurent. 1980 was also the yeardebuted, forever upending the menswear landscape in that first bright flash of the projector. Meanwhile, Gucci of the early ’80s was so dysfunctional they made a movie about it four decades later and Versace, while proving a promising upstart, was not yet a player. Italian luxury on the global stage at the birth of Made in Italy, at the dawn of the Me Decade,While the writer would have preferred a slightly different collar option for his custom polo shirt, the silk-linen trousers were stellar.To this day, the brand’s precision construction remains remarkable. The trousers look like they’re hewn from Ligurian slate but wear as light as birdsong; the French seams on the polo are sewn so tightly and small as to be nearly invisible, and the fit and drape have the aestheticizing effect of an Austrian spa vacation. And like the best made-to-measure, both feel far closer to bespoke than off-the-rack: What you notice most is how little you notice. No bunching, no constricting tugs or too-long sleeves or a shirtwaist that jumps halfway up your back when you place a bag into the overhead. There are minor imperfections—the topmost of the polo’s four buttonholes arrived unfinished and a touch ragged—and the shirt’s large, soft collar, the sole option, gets helplessly flummoxed under even a light blazer. But don’t let them distract from the far more important point, which is how the clothes make you feel.There have been a few moments when I’ve tried something on and immediately felt the designer’s vision. Usually it’s subtle—a way of standing, or walking. An extra button done up. Channeling Giorgio Armani is more potent and altogether more complex. The feeling is militantly decadent and aggressively sensual, but the word that claws to the top of the pile is obsessive: a relentless, exacting pursuit of opulence. Taking off Armani is like getting out of a Rolls-Royce for the first time and suddenly wondering why the rest of the world was built so ugly, loud, and cruel, and it’s no wonder several generations of the affluent have self-medicated with the stuff. Admittedly, a lot of feelings from a pair of trousers and a polo, but credit where it’s due. Which is to say, if you’ve ever questioned what the fuss was all about, if you’ve ever wondered whether his impact was actually that meteoric, raised an eye at the prices, or scoffed at the legend of the dearly departed connoisseur with “Wardrobe by Giorgio Armani” chiseled in marble on his tombstone, well, you’ve never walked a mile in my pants. The best part of both pieces is how relaxed and easy they are—no pointless flourishes, nothing to draw the eye. Except, of course, that everything draws the eye. That’s the simple but consuming seduction of beautiful clothes made beautifully: They don’t look like much until you really look at them, at which point you don’t want to look anywhere else. If you’re the type who’s never quite understood the appeal of quiet luxury, try starting there.
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